iPhone repair at the Apple Store in Austin

I love my 3G iPhone. I got it on Christmas back in 2008, and it was one of the most exciting gifts I ever received. I had wanted one for some time, but we were locked into a contract with Sprint. The hassle of getting out of the contract seemed too great to bother. But Lauren worked her wonder and got us out of the contract on a technicality.

I’ve carried the iPhone with me every day since.

For that reason it was troubling when, two months after my Apple warranty expired the ear speaker on the phone started failing. This morning it went totally kaput. So this afternoon we swung by the Apple Store at The Domain and made an appointment to see an Apple Genius.

After waiting for a little over an hour we met with an extremely friendly genius who, it should be noted, was a very dedicated baseball fan who was excited to see my phone’s MLB wallpaper. Like all decent people, she was a Cubs fan. We spent a few minutes swapping stories about the great bratwursts we’ve experienced at Wrigley Field over the last 20 or so years, then got down to business.

I explained the problem and she left to a room in the back to disassemble the phone. After about 10 minutes, she returned and told me that the internal wires of the device seemed Ok, but that she could tell there was damage to the speaker. She said because of that, and the fact that I had a two inch crack in the back casing of the phone, I should consider replacing it. I grimaced, certain that I was going to have to pony up $200 to $300 for a refurbished replacement phone since I was out of warranty. Then she spoke the magic words:

“I think we’re going to be replacing this for free.”

After 10 more minutes and two signatures on a piece of paper I walked out of the Apple Store with a shiny new phone and a new 90-day warranty.

I’ve always had great service and support that that store the few times I’ve needed to go in. People are friendly, knowledgeable, accomodating, and normal, not could-not-care-less indifferent. I had an iphone swapped out a year or so ago when the touchscreen wasn’t acting right. I just presented it asking about options, and the guy just reached under the counter and swapped it out, synced it up with my data from the other phone and I was good to go. Didn’t have to crack open my wallet, beg or plead, quote policy, or anything. they were just very cool and normal-human about it. Like it was their own store or something, not like paid cogs.

Try to get that done with a Nexus One or Palm Pre. Forget the multitasking and get great customer service instead. And the pundits wonder why iPhone sales are high and getting higher by the day. All the people that I know that use iPhones love going into the Apple retail stores to get help when they need it. This is what’s going to keep Apple sales growing while they’re making profits. Great story. It seems like you’ll be heading back to Apple when you need another smartphone.

My Palm Pre’s battery failed. Turns out this was a well-known problem; early batteries were defective. So when I went to the Sprint store, I didn’t expect trouble. Turns out that you have to order the battery and it took over a week before they had it for me. Best Buy was also no help.

I would have been royally angry at this … if it weren’t for the fact that I use the Pre only for development and my iPhone is my real phone.

Same story here – I had a glitch in my new iPod Touch (the home button would sometimes send a double press rather than a single press). I took it in to the Domain, hoping they could do something (clean it out or adjust something).

They guy pressed the home key, said “OK, there’s a problem, we’ll get you a new one”, and I was out in about 15 minutes.

I’m curious as to what criteria Geniuses use to determine who gets a new phone. Is it based on inventory? Type of damage? Is it total discretion? I have heard some stories of out-of-warranty repairs being quite costly to customers.

Absolutely. That experience affected my opinion of the overall Apple experience. I’ll be in the market for a new PC and possibly a new iPod in the next six months or so. I plan on shopping at Domain Apple Store for those purchases rather than buying online. Customer service translates to sales, in my opinion.